Yet, as Smith's callous comments (for which he later apologized) reminded, ignorance and insensitivity still shroud the true face of mental illness in America. A reality that hits close to home in Florida.

Williams' stock in trade was punch lines. However, the role depression — a medical illness and "not a sign of weakness," declares WebMD — played in his demise again underscores a serious bottom-line need: It's high time Florida lawmakers stop neglecting mental health.

Florida ranks 49th nationally in per-capita spending on basic mental-health services. It doesn't help that Florida, a longtime bottom dweller, since 2012 has slashed $15.2 million from its mental-health budget.

The fallout has been predictable. In Orange County, for example, not only have the poor become accustomed to going without vital psychiatric drugs several times a year as state money dries up, but also fewer than one-third of adults and about one in four kids and teens who are limited to taxpayer-funded mental-health care are being helped.

"The largest shortfall in our state is the lack of available clinics in our communities to serve the needs of patients without insurance," laments Candice Crawford, president of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida. "That is the situation in most all of our communities in Florida. It is just not funded, at all."

As the ranks of the homeless, veterans and inmates — for whom mental-health services often are vital — multiply, so will the problems with penny-pinching those services.

Not to mention the other Floridians for whom compassionate and accessible care might offer a life-saving exit from a dark rabbit hole.

"Lawmakers need to recognize that the rate of suicide far exceeds the rate of murder," Crawford says. "It truly is a public-health crisis, and no one is really paying attention."

Earlier this year, Orange-Osceola Chief Circuit Judge Belvin Perry, asked, "Will it take an act of violence, a tragic suicide or mass shooting before Florida decides to make mental illness a funding priority?"

With any luck, news of the untimely death of a man who lived to brighten lives — but no longer could abide the darkness that took up a consuming residence in his life — will be all the nudge blinkered lawmakers need.

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